Family Reunion

Submitted by: Texas Tanya

 

Several years ago, before Hubby and I adopted Woody and Tigger, we were their foster parents. At the same time, we were also fostering another boy, Mickey. Mickey was a beautiful Hispanic boy. As it turned out, Mickey was born exactly one week after Tigger. So it was sort of like having twins, because they were essentially the same age. They were similar in size and in developmental behavior - however, they looked completely opposite from one another.

Mickey had handsome black hair.

Tigger had handsome blond hair.

Mickey had big brown eyes.

Tigger had big blue eyes.

Mickey had beautiful caramel skin.

Tigger had beautiful milky white skin.
We decided to attend a family reunion in East Texas. It’s a beautiful family of Scots/Irish/American heritage, but the words “culturally diverse” could be a foreign concept. This particular side of the family does not have a regularly scheduled reunion, so most of them didn’t know about us being foster/adoptive parents. When Hubby and I arrived with three loud children in tow, we certainly got their attention. But when they noticed that one of the three was remarkably different, but similar in size and stature to another, they were puzzled and almost speechless.
Then my dear husband, because he thinks he could be a comedian, said to the near silent group, “The younger two are twins.” Then pointing to Mickey, said, “His features are darker because he just stayed in the oven a week longer.”

To which a member of my family said, “Really?”

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Submitted by: Cricket’s Hearth

The Myers Family Reunion

 

As a child growing up in the 50’s, it seemed we had a family reunion almost every weekend. My father was the second to the youngest of a family of 13 children, so there was never a shortage of aunts and uncles with cousins. . . many, many cousins! To have a Sunday dinner without a family or two of cousins over would have been like putting on a coat with an extra sleeve, something would have been missing. In the late 60’s my mother and my Aunt Idie (the second to the oldest sibling in my father’s family) decided we should have a Sunday dinner and have everyone over, a true family reunion with all 100 plus cousins. Thus began the ritual of the Myers Family Reunion, always held the first Sunday in August at the Marietta fairgrounds. A ritual the lasted for more 20 years.

 

I call it a ritual, because for my mother the family reunion was almost more important than Thanksgiving dinner. My mother would spend most of the year planning for the big event. She organized all the games, and trust me, there was no shortage of games. She had two to three games for each of five age groups, complete with prizes, which my mother provided. Then there was the silent auction of white elephant items each family was to bring to help with raising money to pay for the fairground rental. If a family made the mistake of coming to the reunion without bringing an auction item, we would have to hear about it for another 12 months until the next reunion when the forgetful-ones had a chance to redeem themselves by bringing two items for the auction. And Lord have mercy should a family show up without bringing at least two covered dishes -  the reunion was all about the food, or more specifically, who brought what dish!

 

Since we had almost two previous decades of having relatives over for Sunday dinner, and they always brought a covered dish, my mother knew who made the best recipe of any given dish. On the invitation to the very first family reunion, my mother hand-wrote specific requests for food dishes: Oh, Mary, you make the best beef and noodles, I do hope you will bring some! Oh Faye, how could we have a dinner without your apple pie for dessert? And on she went, praising and requesting on all 35 invitations. The next two years she did the same, until everyone firmly understood what dishes they were assigned to bring. Although some relatives liked to complain about my mother’s bossiness, I do think they were also very proud that someone noticed something special about them.

 

I personally enjoyed the family reunion because of all the family stories we first- and second-cousins would retell. Each family of a Myers sibling had a special tale or two they would share that was passed down to them by their father or mother. This was a history lesson of sorts, a history of my father’s family told in humorous (and some not so humorous) renditions of growing up during the Great Depression. I always shared the story of my father, who at age 10, helped a neighbor plow a field (with horse not a tractor) but when the neighbor offered payment for the week’s worth of work, my father had to decline the money. He would have been whipped within “an inch of his life” by his father if he would have taken money for helping a neighbor. So the neighbor gave my dad a scrawny little pig instead. The neighbor explained he would have to “bash it in the head” if dad didn’t want it, because the mother sow wouldn’t feed it. My dad took the little half-starved pig home and bottle-fed it until it was big enough to eat on its own. That fall he took the pig to the Washington County Fair and sold it for $3.00. Now $3 back in 1936 was a lot to pay for a pig. But it was the county fair after all, and the buyer. . . well he was the neighbor who gave dad the pig for helping with the plowing!

 

The Myers Family Reunion finally ended in 1991. By then most of my father’s siblings were deceased and my mother was too ill to handle all the planning and too stubborn to encourage anyone else to take over. She maintained several scrapbooks of pictures and other items of interest from each reunion. I get those books out from time to time and gain so much pleasure from looking at them. I sure miss the family reunion. I miss Cousin Mary’s beef and noodles, Aunt Faye’s apple pie, and Aunt Idie’s cole slaw. I even miss the craziness of the week before the reunion helping mom get everything ready and packed for the hour and a half trip to Marietta. But most of all, I miss the retelling of the family stories and sharing a Sunday dinner with my cousins, all 100-plus of them.